Revisionism Watch 2008: Progress Report
By Ravenhawk | February 12, 2008
For those missing the purpose of the Revisionism Watch, check the Intro. With Super Tuesday and a majority of the state’s primaries already held, many are looking ahead to November, unsure who will be on the ballot. While it has indeed been a cut-throat battle, the main-stream media wants to paint a picture of an epic tie between two equals.
It has been somewhat hard, through all the battle over-hype to track down the actual numbers behind the potential nominees. The best play-by-play I’ve found so far is The Blog From Another Dimension. They have a good overview of the way things have been playing out so far.
Overall the media has like to portray Obama as being the underdog, who is barely fighting against Clinton’s experienced hand. In reality, his charisma and strong call for a change in the corrupt government as it stands has brought quite the uprising since his campaign began. While at the beginning he was an underdog, for sure, since then his campaign has battered and surpassed that of the Clinton camp. Now, with Obama ahead in states and delegates, Clinton is panicking. She’s fired her campaign manager, trying new blood to revitalize her campaign.
I applaud the turn-over. The idea of Clinton is the white house I find a rather disturbing one. A democrat though she may be, no one who would actually compare themselves to Harry Truman is someone I would ever want to see in the white house. She represents staying with the same old political ambiguousness that we’ve been dealing with for years. There is no difference between people like her in the democrats and many of the same in the republicans.
I’ve heard far too much political doublespeak from Clinton to ever cast my vote towards her. Add to this her strong anti-gaming stance over the years and no politically-minded gamer could support her in good conscience.
Tags: Politics, 2008 Elections, Clinton, Democracy, Democrats, Elections, Obama, Primaries, Revisionism, Revisionism Watch 2008
Topics: Politics | 1 Comment »
A Last Minute Political Plea
By Ravenhawk | February 5, 2008
The title “A Second-hand last minute political plea” may have been somewhat more appropriate but whatever. As the large masses flood out today to cast their votes all over the country for various primaries, I find a great tension hanging. This day could likely determine the future of this country, at least for the next four years; Will we act responsibly on the world fronts? Will government clean it’s act up? Can this country possibly move to become something I personally could hold respect for again?
Alas, I’m feeling ineloquent and time is short, as pollsters are already moving out in parts of the country to cast our future. And so, rather than using this soap-box to stand up and give my own, long-winded and potentially un-grandiose plea for those of you voting later today to cast in favor of Obama, I instead send you forth to this link. It is a blog post written by the creator of xkcd, a web comic which I personally enjoy. It does not try to argue some sharp point, berate too many of the failings of the other candidates or any of those usual politics. It is just a short, quiet plea for a better future.
Tags: Politics, Democracy, Obama, primaries, voting, xkcd
Topics: Politics | No Comments »
Revisionism Watch 2008; The Intro
By Ravenhawk | January 9, 2008
The path of revolution is a rare one in the United States; The long anti-communist history of the nation has pruned the lines of radical leaving those who remain to have few choices remaining but a revisionist path. Revisionism; The creation of a socialist state by altering the current capitalist system within it’s own rules.
The question posed before the socialist of today who would see hope on that path is the following: Who do you pay your vote in order to make a step towards that state? It becomes painfully obvious rather quickly that one is selecting the lesser of evils. Unless the rules regarding “third parties” can be changed, there is no hope of a real socialism coming anywhere in the foreseeable future. Between the two parties, obviously the democrats are better, but there is much confusion over who within the democrats to select..
Revisionism Watch, as this collection of posts shall be called, shall follow the various candidates in their attempts to take nomination (and likely election) into the seat of power over the world’s most powerful capitalist nation. And of these candidates, who may do the most harm to any hopes of revisionism and who just might do a bit of helping…
Tags: Politics, 2008 Elections, Communism, democracy, democrats, Political Parties, Revisionism, Revisionism Watch 2008, Socialism
Topics: Politics | 1 Comment »
Government Forms and the Gaming Guild
By Ravenhawk | December 11, 2007
These days it is finally being seen as important by game developers to allow players to easily form groups. This is something that has been needed since the early online games, and I’m quite glad to see finally becoming a norm. However, I have personally found an issue with the forms of governance allowed by these groups. Most games only have one form of governance: Complete Autocracy.
For many games, this isn’t a problem and it is often the most efficient in order to get a particular action done. However, when a group gets to any reasonable size, a guild leader is going to, at the very least, require delegation of authority. Most of world understands that authocratic governments don’t work. So why is it that game designers feel that it is the only form of government that gamers need?
Now, to be fair, not all games have this great flaw.
Puzzles Pirates has a couple other forms of government, however, the implemented them in such a manner that you’re being sickeningly inefficient to get anything done unless you’re autocratic or have all your members with voting rights on a very regular basis.
Dream of Mirror Online has an interesting system for it’s guilds. In order to create the group you need 5 people over level 20 and like.. 40k. The person who creates the guild is the guild chairman and the others are the elders. Elders have the ability to recruit, etc. So far it’s pretty run-of-the-mill.
However, DOMO also allows you to create smaller, sub-guilds within your main guild. Then, you can set managers for these sub-guilds, which gives them complete control over the sub-guild. This allows not only delegation of power, but the setting up of specialized sub-groups within your guild. For instance, my friend’s guild is called Radical Dreamers. Within this guild he has a subguilds for the following activities: One for teaching new players the ropes of the game, one which runs guild events, one for PVP players, One for merchanting for the guild, and one for resource farming.
While still technically autocratic, the sub-guild system allows for some delegation of power, splitting the hold from the hands of one, to the hands of a small group.
I’m still waiting for a game which finds an efficient way to implement a democratic form of government for the guilds. If I work out exactly how I would see it working, I’ll of course post it here.
Posed Question to the Readers: What do you see as the ideal form of governing a gaming group?
Tags: Game Design, MMORPGS, Autocracy, Clans, Democracy, DOMO, Dream of Mirror Online, Games, Government, Guilds, Politics, Puzzle Pirates, PVP
Topics: Game Design, MMORPGS | 7 Comments »
Ignorance and Democracy
By Ravenhawk | November 15, 2007
Last week there was a local election for three positions on the city council. The signs had been up around town “Vote for this person!” “This person is the best!”
However, besides seeing names on yardsigns, people-standing-on-corners signs, and the occassional scarf, I really knew absolutely nothing about the candidates. Which in other words means I knew nothing about the candidates; City council elections are non-partisan, so you don’t even have lame, uninformative party names to judge the value of a candidate by.
And yet I still voted. As opposed to the last election i voted in, (which was the first I was able to) this election did not leave me with a sense of pride. In fact, voting in this one, I felt rather ashamed. For, with my lack of knowledge about the candidates, my voting was almost random.
I felt almost relief at the fact that none of the people I voted for won.
Representitive Democracy is supposed to be a system of government where the people elect people to make their laws who represent the views of the people. However, voting responsibly requires you to know about the views of the person you’re voting for, to know if they really match yours. If you don’t know enough about who you’re voting for, you might as well not be voting.
I’ve always paid very close attention to the people who were running in national elections. My excuse for this local election would probably be something along the lines that I did not have time, what with school and work. But I’d be pathetically lying.
In the information age, it does not take any extensive amount of time at all to find out what the views are of those on the ballot. And if any representative democracy wants to survive, it’s citizens better take that time and know what they’re voting for… ….
Tags: Politics, Democracy, Elections, Representitive Democracy, voting
Topics: Politics | 1 Comment »